November 28, 2011

If a Club does not sign a pick, its signing bonus pool is reduced by the amount of the pick. So, for example, if a Club does not sign its first round pick, and its first round pick had a slot of $1.5 million, the Club’s signing bonus pool would be reduced by $1.5. This is true of any unsigned pick, not just those covered by compensation. The main idea here was to not create incentive for a team to NOT sign a pick. Without this safeguard, a team could “punt” a pick in order to divert those funds to another pick later on, which could result in a Draft that would look a lot like the old ones. In the next year’s draft, the Club would receive a compensation selection for failing to sign its first, second or third round selections, and the slot assigned to the compensation selection will be added to its signing bonus pool.

In the new system, the total aggregate pool in the 10 slotted rounds will be $185 million. With an estimate of $20 million spent after the 10th round (remember, bonuses up to $100,000 do not count toward a team’s aggregate pool), that means teams could spend a combined total of $205 million without getting penalized. That total of $205 million is higher than every Draft from 2004-2010. Spending in past years: $159 million (2006); $155 million (2007); $198 million (2009) and $200 million in 2010.

Jim Callis says the “mlb draft changes [are] looking more direr.” I wonder, will the long-term result of this be young athletes shunning baseball? MAYBE the draft provisions will be modified in the next CBA to prevent this but who knows?

The most significant new detail: If a team fails to sign a player in the first 10 rounds, its draft cap is reduced by the assigned value of his pick. It can’t reallocate that value to sign other players. However, it can reallocate the difference between a player’s bonus and the value of his choice.

October 14, 2011

A fantastic study by BP’s Rany Jazayerli. It’s divided in two. Part 1:

… Here’s my point: I don’t think anyone would argue that, all things equal, a 17-year-old player is likely to develop into a better player than an 18-year-old player. But I wondered if the baseball industry as a whole has underestimated the importance of age. I wondered if, given two players taken at the same slot in the draft, the younger player returned greater value. In other words, even accounting for the fact that teams took age into consideration—presumably, a player who is particularly young for his draft class might get picked earlier—I wondered if those players were stillundervalued. So I decided to do a study.

So far, all I’ve presented to you are anecdotes, and the plural of anecdote is not data. For instance, the youngest hitter drafted #1 overall wasn’t Griffey, it was Tim Foli, who in 16 years in the majors hit a total of 25 home runs. We need some data.

Fortunately, this is what BP interns were created for. With the help of Bradley Ankrom, Paige Landsem, and Clark Goble, I compiled a list of every high school hitter selected in the first 100 picks of every draft from 1965 through 1996. I stopped the data set at 1996 because I wanted to look at how these players performed over the course of their careers—I defined “careers” as the 15 years after they were drafted. …

May 21, 2010

While the use of statistical analysis has grown in leaps and bounds, especially from the college side of things, tools still rule the day when it comes to the draft, so let’s focus on the best tools from the top prospects available, beginning with position players. …

Laumann likes very much what he sees from David Holmberg this spring, and thinks Trayce Thompson will probably eventually move to a corner outfield position. Not this year though. Laumann also touches on Jared Mitchell, Bryce Harper, Charlie Leesman, Leroy Hunt, Stefan Gartrell, C.J. Retherford.

December 14, 2009

Players available in each year’s Draft class hail from the United States, Canada or Puerto Rico. If the powers that be have their way, however, that could all change as early as 2012.

Commissioner Bud Selig has stated on more than one occasion his support for both a hard slotting system for Draft bonuses and a Draft that would be open to amateur players from every nation.

“There’s no question in my mind, in 2011, certainly a [hard] slotting system and a worldwide Draft are things we will be very aggressive in talking about,” Selig said soon after this past Draft’s signing deadline in August.

Is such an international Draft at all tenable? Is it realistic to imagine that there’s a way to bring all of the baseball-playing nations under one Draft umbrella? …

The league typically cites a litany of problems when arguing in favor of the international draft, including concerns of age fraud, exploitation of the players by buscones, rampant corruption and overall cost. I’ve written at length on these issues before, and the chief thing to take away from it is that when it comes to talking about an international draft, the league tries to conflate all of these issues into one giant problem that is inherent in international free agency when, in fact, they are many separate issues, most of which could be solved without the institution of an international draft. …